Janet Daley was born in America where she began her political life on the Left as an undergraduate at Berkeley. She moved to Britain (and to the Right) in 1965 where she spent nearly twenty years in academic life before becoming a political commentator: all factors that inform her writing on British and American policy and politicians.

George Osborne, the champion news manager, fails to manage the news

On one of his many broadcast interviews this morning, George Osborne said rather defensively, "My job is not to write the next day's newspaper headlines…" Well actually, George, I thought it was. As the mastermind of the Conservatives' political strategy, you were supposed to be splitting your time between the day job at the Treasury and the war room of the Tory re-election project. So today's front page explosion of "granny tax" stories cannot have been exactly what you (or your party) had hoped for.

What just happened? A carefully orchestrated series of leaks ensured that the cut in 50p tax was an anti-climax. All the overblown outrage of Labour politicians and trade union leaders had played itself out in the week before the Chancellor got to his feet on Wednesday. Indeed, virtually everything in this Budget was a foregone conclusion before it was announced. It looked very much as if newsrooms everywhere would be at a loss for any eye-catching splash for the next day. There was only one surprise – the freeze in the tax allowance for present pensioners and its removal from future ones – and so, unsurprisingly, it got all the attention. In fact, the explanation of it which is being provided by both the Chancellor and Simon Hughes (who is also touring the studios) is perfectly reasonable. The advantageous tax allowance which now goes to pensioners is going to be merged with the universally raise personal allowance. So in future, everybody will get the more generous tax relief and there will be no need for pensioners to fill out a complex self-assessment tax form in order to receive it. Simple policy, simple defence. But there would have been no need for this frantic apologia if George – the political genius – hadn't misjudged the effect of the announcement.

Fortunately for him, the Labour leadership is so brain dead that it ran on the pre-prepared script about "same old Tories favouring their millionaire friends" instead of leaping on the granny tax and exploiting its momentary shock value. Lucky old George. He made a major blunder and his enemies didn't even notice.